in well-established religious organizations and the levels of concern about so-called “cults.”
Moreover, there are few genuine controversies about mainstream churches: merely a percep-tion of scattered problems associated with par-ticular individuals. As a category, churches are not perceived to give rise to difficult moral or legal dilemmas. Indeed, William Bainbridge (1997: 24) refers to them as “conventional religious organizations.” Yet, in my view, this categorical distinction between them and so-called cults is exaggerated. There is actually a continuum between the problematic and the unproblematic aspects of all religious collectivities.
From a sociological point of view, it makes very little difference whether the abuses are accidental or consequential on doctrines or ideology.
Admittedly, the most spectacular episodes of violence and collective suicide have oc-curred in so-called cultic groups, but public animosity against the category of “cult” was strong even before the destruction of the Peoples Temple at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. In any case, that particular episode and the armed assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993 should remind us that both of the religious collectiv-ities concerned were developments of more or less respectable Christian denominations. And in the wake of the massive slaughter of reli-giously identified opponents in such places as the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, who can deny that “ordinary” religion can also be a hazard to life and limb?
The important thing is therefore to under-stand why and how problems occur on any religious collectivity: not just in collectivities categorized a priori as cultic. This could be done by analyzing the processes of, for example, exploitation, authoritarian leader-ship, harassment and abuse, systematic fraud and deception, violence and patriarchy in all religious collectivities. Such an approach might even reveal that religious collectivities are not themselves completely distinctive; it might show that religious collectivities are only marginally different from other voluntary organizations in respect of the problems to
which they give rise. This is a heretical thought for a sociologist of religion.
This is not the place to develop this particu-lar argument further (see Beckford 1985a, 1989), so let me turn now to the question of why the problems attributed to “cults” gain a much higher public profile than the much more widespread problems attributable to sup-posedly conventional religious collectivities.
The Social Sources of Cult Controversies
Allegations that so-called cults brainwash their recruits, exploit them economically, abuse them sexually and, in many other ways, ruin their lives are too well known to need repeat-ing here (Barker 1984, 1989; Beckford 1985b; Richardson 1985, 1991, 1996). I want to suggest that this pattern of accusations and, in particular, its exclusive focus on stig-matized movements can be explained in terms of several characteristics of late twentieth-century life in advanced industrial societies.
Massification and demonization Firstly, the consolidation of nation-states with relatively stable boundaries and effective mea-sures for monitoring and controlling the ac-tivities of their populations had helped to perpetuate the medieval suspicion of people who were migrants, vagrants, wandering holy men and women, or free spirits. Nowadays cit-izenship is not only the key to eligibility for various obligations and benefits but it is also inseparable from numerous processes of offi-cial registration, monitoring, and surveillance.
The surface of late modern life may appear to be fragmented or confused, but the underly-ing forces of standardization, rationalization, and commodification are still powerful. The metaphor of “slipping through the net”
conveys the sense that people whose life course does not conform with the “normal”
progression through stages of education, training, employment, consumption, sexual relationships, leisure, and welfare have somehow managed to avoid the normal
devices for detecting failures in the system or weaknesses of individual motivation.
The fact that members of some minority reli-gious movements choose to order aspects of their lives in accordance with different priori-ties makes them objects of suspicion because, among other things, their non-conventional ways of living imply that something is wrong with the machinery of “normalization.” The public sense of fear and outrage is all the more intense because it is widely believed that late modernity is a time of great individualization and that non-conventional religious practices are therefore unnecessary. But permissible indi-vidualization is mostly confined to choice of such things as dress, leisure activities, language, and sexual relations. Departures from the expected patterns of education, employment, and consumption are grounds for suspicion and, in some cases, demonization. It is there-fore acceptable to “shop around” for religious ideas, alternative therapies, or spiritual experi-ences; but it is not acceptable to follow a reli-gious path which involves a break with the publicly approved life course. The fact that some people choose to abandon the path of
“normal” education or employment for the sake of non-conventional religious ideals is experienced by others as an affront to their con-viction that modern individuals are free, ratio-nal decision-makers. In other words, modern living is both massified and pervaded by an ide-ological conviction that individual freedom of choice is stronger than ever.
In these circumstances, claims that new reli-gious movements brainwash their recruits or exploit them unfairly can be interpreted as reactions against the exercise of free will in a register to which the accusers are deaf.
Allegations of brainwashing are the modern equivalent of late medieval accusations of witchcraft and demonic possession (Anthony and Robbins 1980; Robbins 1988). The common thread is the claim that reason has been subverted by an external agency.
Communication and controversy Secondly, the severity of present-day strictures against NRMs is partly a function of the
effi-ciency and rapidity of communication in the late twentieth century. In previous eras it was common for unconventional religious groups to operate only in very small geographical areas or to create their own remote commu-nities as refuges from prying eyes. But nowa-days it is possible for even small movements, with the help of telecommunications, to reach large audiences scattered over huge areas of the world. By the same logic it is more diffi-cult for such movements to avoid prying eyes because communications among their oppo-nents or critics are equally efficient. So, just as NRMs can capitalize on the advantages of computerized mailing lists and multimedia presentations to spread their message, cult monitoring groups find it relatively easy to collect information about large numbers of NRMs and to compile aggregate statistics. In this sense, the idea that the category of “cult”
has become threatening on a large scale has been facilitated by the technology which permits rapid exchange, compilation, and analysis of information between cult monitor-ing groups, researchers, journalists, and pro-gram makers around the world.
The intensity of today’s cult controversies has to be understood partly in terms of the simultaneous application of communications technology by NRMs and by their opponents.
If global communications have made the human world appear to be a smaller place than previously, they are also making cult contro-versies more intense.1There is no reason why a small world should be less conflictual than a larger one. In other words, we should expect that religious controversies of all kinds will become more intense in the future. Indeed, one might go further and speculate that religion will continue to be a major contributor to global disputes because it is one of the places where the “colonization of the life-world” by “the system” (Habermas 1987) can be challenged.
Secularization and polarization Thirdly, I suggest that religion is paradoxically likely to remain at the heart of controversies and disputes in the globalized future despite the fact that levels of participation in the
activities of formal religious organizations are in decline and that religion exercises relatively little explicit influence over the policies pur-sued by governments, businesses, or public institutions. How can religion be simultane-ously controversial but marginal? Would it not be more sensible to expect that religion would become more bland and uninteresting as more people became religiously “illiterate” or simply unconcerned about it?
My answer is that it is precisely the fact that large numbers of people in advanced industrial societies are ignorant or apathetic about reli-gion most of the time that makes the activities of those who are enthusiastic about their reli-gion potentially more controversial. I am not simply repeating the observation that secular-ization is compatible with outbursts of reli-gious enthusiasm in marginal places (Wilson 1976). I am arguing that a process of polar-ization is taking place between religiously energetic minorities and religiously apathetic majorities. Moreover, this process of polariza-tion will ensure that, in the midst of secular-ization, religion will remain controversial. My claim is not that NRMs are throw-backs to an earlier age of religious vitality. On the con-trary, I want to suggest that it is a very modern dynamic between active minorities and inac-tive majorities which is helping to create a new and polarized situation. The public animosity towards NRMs is only one expression of the perverse logic which connects secularization with intense religious controversies. NRMs are simply caught up in a process which affects all religious collectivities.
What Would Make “Cults” Appear to Be “Normal”
What evidence is there to support my argument that the demonization of “cults” is a product of social forces inherent in late twentieth-century advanced industrial societies? One way of answering this question is to calculate how far NRMs would have to change in order to become acceptable. In other words, what would help to make NRMs appear to be normal or acceptable? I was inspired to pursue this
approach by Peter Brown’s stunning insight into the political economy of religious tolera-tion in late Roman antiquity:
Seen from the point of view of the civic no-tables of the fourth and fifth centuries, the annual paroxysm of the collection of taxes . . . and not religious affairs – however exciting these might be . . . to those who knew about such things, on a supernatural level – was the true elephant in the zoo of late Roman poli-tics . . . In most areas, the system of negoti-ated consensus was usually stretched to its limits by the task of extracting taxes. It had little energy left over to give “bite” to intol-erant policies in matters of religion. (Brown 1995: 41–2)
In short, religious minorities and enthusi-asts in late Antiquity could be tolerated if they paid their taxes. Toleration was extended to minority religions for pragmatic reasons: not out of concern for philosophical principles. Is this still the situation? Let me discuss five ways in which toleration is extended these days to NRMs which satisfy various non-religious conditions imposed by state authorities.
1 Toleration depends these days on much more than paying taxes, although move-ments which are seen to evade their fiscal obligations certainly confirm the modern stereotype of cults as fraudulent. The Church of Scientology, for example, has attracted especially harsh criticism for its attempts to qualify for tax privileges on the grounds of being a religious organization in the USA (successfully) or a charity in the UK (unsuccessfully). In both cases, the crucial question is whether Scientology constitutes a religion: and the answer is sought paradoxically from state agencies with responsibility for purely material things. Nevertheless, religious movements seeking to have their religious authenticity affirmed must turn to these secular agen-cies. Being recognized as religious in the eyes of the US Internal Revenue Service or the Charity Commission in the UK or a court of law in Italy is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for achieving accept-ability in the long run.
2 In parts of southern Europe and elsewhere in the world, NRMs are tolerated on con-dition that their members comply with requirements to perform military service.
States which offer exemption to categories of religious professionals still tend to demand that NRMs prove their religious authenticity by showing willingness to comply with conscription laws before be-coming eligible to apply for exemption.
3 Another condition of NRMs’ acceptability in many countries is the abandonment of all claims to cure medical problems, espe-cially if therapy forms part of the move-ments’ normal practices. Challenges to, or evasions of, state-licensed medical prac-tices are rarely tolerated. NRMs are under suspicion if their members do not avail themselves of publicly available medical services or personnel.
4 Education is less tightly controlled by state agencies than is the provision of health care, but NRMs which prefer to educate their members’ children in their own schools are still widely suspected of ir-responsibility or ulterior motives. Move-ments which educate their children from different countries in a single international school are especially suspect. They are accused of trying to hide their children in places where the standards of education and care cannot be easily monitored.
5 A novel condition of acceptability in the UK concerns the accessibility to the public of NRMs’ worship services. The Broad-casting Act 1990 made it a condition of religious organizations’ access to commer-cial channels of television and radio that their worship services should be publicly advertised and accessible to members of the public without special invitation or the payment of entrance fees. This condition seems to be predicated on two assump-tions. The first is that bona fide religious organizations presumably have no need to impose restrictions on access to their ser-vices; and the second is that the risk of abuse or exploitation is reduced if a
reli-gious organization’s services are open to public scrutiny.
In short, there is a close parallel between late antiquity and the late twentieth century insofar as toleration of religious minorities in both eras was and is still conditional on their satisfying largely “secular” criteria of religious authenticity. My point is that this dependence on the deployment of non-religious criteria by agencies of the state in order to make decisions about the authenticity of NRMs is virtually inevitable at a time when religion is frag-mented and when no single religious organi-zation has control over it (Beckford 1989).
Conclusion: The Normal–Abnormal Continuum The difference between “normal” and “abnor-mal” religious groups is not so much a matter of fixed categorical distinctions but more a matter of skirmishes along a shifting frontier, In fact, sociological analysis is best served by substituting “continuum” for “distinctions.”
Of course, public opinion and some religious interest groups prefer to make categorical distinctions between, say, “real religion” and
“destructive cults.” But a dispassionate analy-sis of the social aspects of religion suggests that, within all religious organizations, some practices are accepted as clear evidence of reli-gious authenticity and others are suspected of compromising that authenticity. The criteria of acceptability change over time, often reflecting ethical and ideological changes which take place outside religious organizations.
Moreover, the skirmishes that break out from time to time in connection with the objectionable practices of specific NRMs are rarely conducted in isolation from other griev-ances. Discussion of particular cases quickly gives way to claims about the entire category of “destructive cults” or “cultism” as a general issue. Continuities between NRMs and other religious organizations are thereby ignored or suppressed for ideological reasons.
Sociologists would be better advised to
concentrate on analyzing specific dimensions of all religious collectivities without making prior judgments about their church-like or cult-like nature.
Note
1 Disputes in some Christian churches are also intensified by the ease of modern communica-tions and by the relentless search of journalists for sensational stories. See Ammerman (1990) on the conduct of disputes among the souther Baptists in the USA.
References
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